Australia take on Spain in the Davis Cup final this weekend, at home, on grass, in a tennis contest they are expected to win comfortably. For those who bleed green and gold, only victory will do, but the terrible spectre of losing persisted in Melbourne Park this week despite the air of jollity on court as Lleyton Hewitt and Mark Philippoussis knocked up with the doubles specialists Wayne Arthurs and Todd Woodbridge.
Losing seldom sits easily with any Australian, and defeat at home even less so. If last weekend’s harbinger of doom was Jonny Wilkinson, this time around Juan Carlos Ferrero — the world number three — and Carlos Moya will be the ones posed, metaphorically, in front of the posts.
The Rugby World Cup is not the only precedent to worry Australia’s captain John Fitzgerald and his men. Two years ago Australia took on France here in identical circumstances and lost.
Hewitt’s presence in any team would normally be enough to inspire confidence, such is his wholehearted commitment to the cause, yet he has not hit a ball competitively since September. He has hardly been idle — and has a more muscular frame to prove it —but match fitness cannot be manufactured in the gym and even he cannot predict how his body will react to three days of hard hitting. Moreover, he has a poor record against Moya and a patchy one against Ferrero.
So it may fall to the Melbourne-born Philippoussis to be the saviour, just as he was against France in Nice in 1999, when Australia last won the cup.
Victory would mean as much to Philippoussis — who despite three knee operations in recent years came back to reach the Wimbledon final in July — as it would to any of his teammates.
‘If this was a story, you couldn’t really get a better ending,†he said, ‘except hopefully holding that Davis Cup up at the weekend.â€
For a nation used to sporting excellence, the alternative does not bear thinking about. —